Large international differences in the price of labor can be sustained by differences between workers, or by natural and policy barriers to worker mobility. We use migrant selection theory and evidence to place lower bounds on the ad valorem equivalent of labor mobility barriers to the United...

For decades, migration economics has stressed the effects of migration restrictions on income distribution in the host country. Recently the literature has taken a new direction by estimating the costs of migration restrictions to global economic efficiency. In contrast, a new strand of research...

The returns to schooling are estimated for 28 European and Central Asian countries using the Mincerian function. Our results show that while the public sector pays on average more than the private sector, the effect of education on earnings is stronger in the private sector. However, the returns...

International migrants who seek protection also participate in the economy. Thus the policy of the United States to drastically reduce refugee and asylum-seeker arrivals from 2017 to 2020 might have substantial and ongoing economic consequences. This paper places conservative bounds on those...

The past several decades have witnessed a rebirth of global labor mobility. Workers have begun to move between countries at rates not seen since before World War One. During the same period, economists' study of international migration has been framed by a particular textbook model of location...

We report a small-sample, preliminary evaluation of the economic impact of temporary overseas work by Haitian agricultural workers. This work occurs in the United States in the context of a pilot program designed as a form of post-disaster development assistance to Haiti. We find that the...

The effect of foreign labor on native employment within an occupation depends on native labor supply to that occupation – which is rarely directly measured – even if native and foreign labor are perfect substitutes in production. This paper uses two natural quasiexperiments to directly...

Despite the large individual benefits of guest work by the poor in rich countries, agencies charged with global poverty reduction do little to facilitate guest work. This may be because guest work is viewed as a repugnant transaction – one whose harmful side-effects might cause third parties...

A recent surge in child migration to the U.S. from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala has occurred in the context of high rates of regional violence. But little quantitative evidence exists on the causal relationship between violence and international emigration in this or any other region....

An influential strand of research has tested for the effects of immigration on natives' wages and employment using exogenous refugee supply shocks as natural experiments. Several studies have reached conflicting conclusions about the effects of noted refugee waves such as the Mariel Boatlift in...